Word: behaviorism
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Dates: during 1940-1940
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...book, Why Men Behave Like Apes and Vice Versa (Princeton University Press; $3), grew out of several lectures on the organic basis of behavior which he delivered at Princeton last spring. The learned author, pleased by his Princeton audience, declared in his preface: "It did not dwindle perceptibly from lecture to lecture; it did not cough, shuffle or fidget, and it included no old ladies who arose and walked out noisily and indignantly...
Much has Hooton said on the evolutionary decay of modern man, on the biological factor in crime, but this is his fullest survey to date of the biology- &-behavior problem in general. He trades hard punches with social scientists, or at least with extreme behaviorists among them who seem to think that one human being would behave as well as another if their environments were equal. Hooton's contention: since feeblemindedness can be inherited, why not feeble morality? A favorite phrase of his is "moral imbecile...
...this may seem elementary, but when Hooton steps over the threshold to humanity he finds that tender-minded idealists suddenly throw the biological basis of behavior right out the window. They cannot deny that bodily differences are inherited, so they simply put body and mind in separate compartments. "This," says Hooton, "is the human declaration of independence. It has produced a social schizophrenia which is making a madhouse of civilization...
Harvard undergraduates might blush to discover that Professor Hooton had to leave Harvard to get the inspiration for his latest work. It grew out of lectures on the organic basis of behavior which he delivered at Princeton last Spring. Pleased by his Princeton audience, he declared in his preface...
Hooton declares that inherited temperamental differences in animals are admitted by most scientists, but that when they stop over the threshold to humanity, these tender-minded, idealists suddenly throw the biological basis of behavior right out of the window...